Russian Liberation Army

The Russian Liberation Army (ROA) was an army of former Soviet Red Army prisoners-of-war who were recruited by Nazi Germany as allied troops. Led by the former Russian general Andrey Vlasov, the ROA was under German command, and the army had a total strength of 130,000 troops by April 1945, consisting of captured Soviet troops who would rather fight for the Axis Powers than be exterminated through hard labor. The ROA would be best-known for its actions against the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union during the campaign in southern Germany and Czechoslovakia, and the army decided to defect to the Allies during the Prague Offensive in May 1945 at the very end of the war. The ROA attempted to surrender to the Allied troops from the United States and Britain, knowing that the USSR would send most of them to gulags and execute their officers. However, the USA agreed to hand the collaborators over to the USSR, and most of the officers were executed.